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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Romania
Index
Although housing was a high priority, in the 1980s it
remained
inadequate in both supply and quality. The law allotted
only twelve
square meters of living space per person, and the average
citizen
had even less--about ten square meters. More than half a
million
workers lived in hostels; some had lived there for many
years, even
after they had married and had children. These hostels
were known
for their cramped and squalid conditions and for the heavy
drinking
and violence of their occupants. The lists of persons
waiting for
housing were long, and bribes of as much as 40,000 lei
were
necessary to shorten the wait.
Defying reality, the PCR leadership pronounced the
housing
problem "solved for the most part" and predicted its total
elimination by 1990, an unlikely prospect in view of the
fact that
new housing construction during the Eighth Five-Year Plan
(1986-90)
had fallen far short of target. To achieve the official
goal of
fourteen square meters per person by the year 2000, it
would have
been necessary to complete an apartment every three
minutes.
Comecon-published statistics and even figures released by
the
Romanian government indicated that in fact there had been
a sharp
decline in the construction of new dwelling space.
Data as of July 1989
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